


Treasure and Shame

by V_mum



Series: Kaayras Adaar [11]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Asexual Cole (Dragon Age), Autistic Cole (Dragon Age), Chaotic thought process regarding rape, Cole is immensely important and it is very hard not to write this entire story from his perspective, Consensual and yet Not Good Sex, Disguised Mental Illnesses and Self Sacrifices, Drug Use, F/M, Grooming of Children (because Qunari), Head trauma, Headaches & Migraines, Helpful Cole (Dragon Age), Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor canon divergence, PTSD and Traumatic refrences, Rape/Non-con Elements, Rejection Sensitivity, Suicidal Thoughts, between cannon occurrences, lots of vague chaos because Cole and a Secretive Inquisitor, mild but does contain sexual content, more like, not really - Freeform, sexual favors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:27:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25273885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/V_mum/pseuds/V_mum
Summary: Kaayras’ headache, of course, never goes away, even when a little weight is taken off him. In fact, it gets a little worse every hour that passes. By sunset, it is relatively comparable to The Iron Bull’s warhammer steadily pounding an iron nail deep into his brain, while the claws of a Rage Demon scratch into the base of the skull, like trying to dig through dirt. Or so Kaayras hisses in his own mind. Cole isn't sure he knows what either of those things would really feel like, but given Adaar has the most experience with head pains, Cole differs to his judgement.
Relationships: (And Cole's Surprise Twist), (Primarily Platonic Relationships), Cole & Inquisitor (Dragon Age), Cole/Inquisitor (Dragon Age), Inquisitor & Advisors (Dragon Age), Inquisitor & Companions (Dragon Age)
Series: Kaayras Adaar [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1178300
Comments: 3
Kudos: 22





	Treasure and Shame

**Author's Note:**

> Most of the violence and nonconsensual history we see in this story is in pieces, chaotically and abstractly retold through Cole fishing them out of Kaayras Adaar as he goes. 
> 
> None the less, use caution if you are sensitive to such topics.

It’s dark, and a particularly restful night of sleeping souls. 

But in the depth of the castle, Kaayras is awake as Cole wanders, listening to the people of Skyhold. Cole can hear him and his dull, painful echo- sounds of sadness  _ anyone  _ has, even the most happy people in Thedas. It’s the Night- and though Cole  _ can _ sleep, he does not need to, and it is hard when there are hurting hearts nearby. There’s enough people in Skyhold at any given time, that at least  _ someone  _ is always awake and sad at all hours.

How could he ever lie still, stationary, silent, when someone weeps within the same stone walls he lays? Cole doesn't need to sleep.

He’s already retrieved a cup of milk for a child crying of a nightmare- a memory of Haven in flames turned into a bad dream. He’s already sprinkled food for a cat that had not caught a mouse today to eat, and was hungry, and hunger is one of the worst hurts, Cole thinks. It's the worst, and easily fixed, if someone knows you're there. So Cole never forgets to check for the hungry.  _ Never _ forgets. 

He’d even already secured a blueberry pastry and left it in Cassandra’s room before she went to bed after writing reports late into the night, hoping to ease her racing mind and heart. She chastises the air softly when she doesn't see him for having stole it, but he thinks he helped anyway. She calls herself silly, after, for talking to thin air. He knows he helped because she smiles as she murmurs it to herself. Small, simple, a smile, just for her. She wouldn't have smiled, Cole thinks, if she’d known he was standing just outside her door. He lets her keep her smile to herself and leaves quietly. As if he hadn’t ever been there- except he was there, and she remembers that, because she’s happy, and she’s one of the people here who tell Cole she wont forget.

She can’t control if she forgets- no one can, except for Cole sometimes. But it still feels nice, to know she doesn't want to. And that, for now, she remembers each time Cole leaves her small pastries from the kitchen. He knows she remembers, too- because she scolds him for it after, the next time she spots him. She gets a warm feeling and in her mind, it’s like she’s scolding a little baby child who played just a little too loudly or too rough in the courtyard. 

She’d not want the children to ever really  _ stop  _ playing. 

Cassandra doesn't really want him to stop being kind, to stop helping. 

She just scolds because it’s the right thing to do. Cole can understand that Cassandra helps people, just like Cole, but in her own ways. And that means warm-hearted scolding, and keeping her smiles behind closed doors, and roaring on the battlefield with her shield unmoving, and trying to teach wayward spirits like himself not to steal. 

Skyhold rests easier tonight than most nights. Cole is not very busy. He has time to think about things, like how Cassandra helps people. And other things. Cole prefers other things- when he thinks too much about people, in ways that aren't necessarily about helping people… things tend to get… 

Scary. 

He had liked to think too much about Rhys, once. About why Rhys and people in the spire did things that seemed strange or unnecessary. He used to think a lot about Rhys. 

Cole tries not to think about people too much, unless it’s to help.

So Cole looks, once more, for ways to help in the quiet tundra night, instead of thinking.

He wanders to the highest point of the castle, through dusty stairways or along ramparts, feeling the familiar calls of an aching heart. Many of which, aching or torn or restless, dwell in the castle. But tonight, most have already begun drifting into easy sleep. 

Most of his helping that night is merely easing along the process of sleep. Sprinkling dried catnip lightly on the edge of the healer’s bed, so that her kitten will curl up with her to sleep, and she’ll feel at ease. Tucking a tuft of lemongrass under a servant’s pillow, so the smell can ease his homesickness into pleasant dreams of fields behind his parent’s home. Humming a soft tune to an infant, the youngest one in skyhold, who’d woken soon after her parents had fallen asleep, so that she would not wake them for the fifth night in a row.

Tonight, each heart eases, easily, into easy sleep. Cole finds himself content.

There are few who are still awake or burdened. One of them draws Cole’s attention up, and up, and up, until he rests on the balcony of the Inquisitor's quarters.

The Half-light moon is at the top of the sky and whistling gently along to harmonize with a roaring ice-battering wind miles away. It’s the peak of midnight when Cole finds himself standing on the rail of the highest balcony, listening to the melody. The second moon is not out, tonight. 

Cole is not busy; he has the time, the quiet, to hear the sky sing. Skyhold was usually too busy to hear it. He closes his eyes for a moment, to listen.

So very, very far away crossing mountains, Cole hears a mother wolf howl. He feels her pain; she lost a pup today, and worries for the other two. The single nug she caught to feed her family earlier in the night only hurt for a few seconds; death is an easy end to pain of all kinds, but if Cole has learned anything, people think it’s a mercy best left for the animals.

Cole understands that better, now, then he once did.

Kaayras tosses and turns in his bedroom, and the door out to the balcony is propped open; the freezing cold helps him feel less hot, less achey, soothes the ravenous headaches that come about, some days, from the moment he opens his eyes in the morning. Cole had left the doors open, hours ago when the sun had set, before Kaayras had come up to go to sleep. Cole had left them open, to chill the room, when he had felt the miserable pounding ache from the Qunari man all day long. 

Kaayras had been trying his best to plow through a meeting with Cullen, today, and had immense difficulty following each tactical word. It was then that Cole had been drawn to him, and Cole had spent much of the day observing curiously.

On a day so easy in Skyhold, where the people where unusually restful and at peace, Cole had been imminently aware of not only Kaayras’ skull-shaking headache, but of the steady pulse of anxiety as the horned man struggled to speak, or to listen to others, or to keep his hands still and expression calm, or to accomplish even one of his tasks for the day unassisted. Kaayras was failing at each one he attempted, even ones so easy for him as to sharpen his blades, or collect ingredients to make elfroot potions.

Cole had spent a lot of time helping, today, like most days. 

Like gently pulling a child away from the steep edge of the ramparts as he played. Like saving Cassandra her pastry for later that night. Like helping a tired servant with her chores when she had fallen asleep to nap.

Like gently coercing an Orlesian man in a mask to mention to Vivienne that the Inquisitor was looking a touch  _ unkempt _ , so that Vivienne would mention it to  _ Varric _ , and so that Varric would leave his usual spot at the fireplace to go ever so simply bump into Kaayras. 

Varric was ever so capable when it came to calming Kaayras down, and manages to alleviate a few problems Kaayras cannot seem to solve, all in one fell swoop. 

While Cole picks dandelion greens from the edges of the castle courtyards only moments after convincing the Orlesian man to speak to Vivienne, the helpful part of him watches contentedly as Varric not only saves Kaayras from his struggled conversation with Cullen with his interruption, but also promptly helps Kaayras tick at least one item off his to-do list. 

Varric and Kaayras move near the Tavern alcove and carefully Kaayras is talked into allowing Varric help him the much needed shave. A shave Adaar had not even attempted, as the headache had sent his hands to a violent treble most of the day. 

Varric is a wise man who does not point out it was Vivienne whom had politely implied he “fix Adaar’s unsightly scruff.”

Kaayras gets at least one thing done, today, even if it takes a bit of help from Varric, and Kaayras reminds himself in circles through his mind to never let Varric help him shave a  _ third  _ time,  _ because that’s just pathetic. _ Despite how hard Kaayras is on himself for it, Cole can still tell Kaayras feels slightly calmer after the break from the difficult-to-follow conversations with Cullen about troop movements, and has one less thing to worry about for the moment. 

Having a good shave for once makes Kaayras feel less  _ Scary _ . And Kaayras values not looking scary.

Kaayras’ headache, of course, never goes away, even when a little weight is taken off him. In fact, it gets a little worse every hour that passes. By sunset, it is relatively comparable to The Iron Bull’s warhammer steadily pounding an iron nail deep into his brain, while the claws of a Rage Demon scratch into the base of the skull, like trying to dig through dirt. Or so Kaayras hisses in his own mind. Cole isn't sure he knows what either of those things would really feel like, but given Adaar has the most experience with head pains, Cole differs to his judgement.

Cole gets a little dizzy at one point, when Kaayras walks past him and the blunt end of the pain washes over Cole at close range. 

Kaayras doesn't notice Cole bracing against the castle wall while trying to collect spider webs for the healer, sucking in air sharp yet silent through his teeth.

It  _ hurts _ in a way that will  _ never  _ end, and leaves Cole rocking for a moment, even after the pain recedes when Kaayras steps into the door to the castle kitchen. 

_ Looking for the hidden store of alcohol, tempting, tempting, he won't  _ **_actually_ ** _ drink any of it, but hell is it tempting, to drown the pain away, anything to make it stop hurting, stop hurting, so I can think, so I can think, it’s  _ **_never_ ** _ going away _ .

Cole once brought up a medicine from the healer’s tent when they had just moved into Skyhold, the same kind the healer had given to a man who’d come to her for headaches. That had been an injury from being thunked around too hard in a sparring match, and Cole doesnt know nearly enough about medicine to gauge if it can help Kaayras right, with a chronic pain, but it was something. Something to ease the ravenous feeling in his skull.

But back then, Kaayras had returned it to her without even trying it. Kaayras took nothing for his splitting skull pains. He pretended he didn't have them at all, when anywhere near someone with a medical capability, let alone the Healer herself. Cole realizes after his first try with the medicine that Kaayras is  _ very _ scared of drugs.

So Cole tries to help in other ways when Kaayras gets the splitting pains. 

The winter cold did help; Cole remembers a brief trip through the Frostbacks, a month ago, when they’d made camp. Kaayras had made a pillow of snow, and it had numbed the blinding migraine he’d gotten during the trek. That had helped, then; the cold.

Cole made sure to watch the kitchen doors as he continued to gather cobwebs- now at a safer distance, near the barns, from Kaayras’ crippling headache. Once he’s relieved that Kaayras emerges with a tongue still dry of alcoholic aid, Cole vanishes up to Kaayras’ bedroom and carefully props each of the bedroom’s balcony doors open, before hunting Kaayras’ bedroom for more cobwebs to collect.

The icy chill in the room helps, tonight, but it's more than the horrible headache and the blinding light of the mark that pours out in droves from the balcony door, now. It’s more than just pain, thundering blinding head pain, which makes Kaayras Adaar restless while he tries to doze. 

Cole listens to it intently, trying to garner some solution, as he watches out over the Tundra.

Kaayras’ plagued with long distant memories that are faded, grey, full of holes from tattered replaying, altered from attempts to fill the gaps, wrong like dreams in certain conflicting ways that makes much of it distorted. But they are so tight, distressing, distilled in submission and fear that they still feel vivid, even if the faces are blurred, and he can't remember if the kissing came first or the touching.

Cole watches, absent, thinking, wondering, detached, until another child wakes with a sniffled cry, and he vanishes from the balcony back into Skyhold, leaving the Inquisitor to restless tossing and turning and aching. 

Kaayras’ hurts echo no louder than anyone else’s.

He is far from the only person hurting in Skyhold; if anything, he's one of the quietest, and his hurts are more  _ memory _ than current. 

When his Headaches aren't striking his nerves like lightning, Kaayras is actually very easy to miss in the sea of the Inquisitions' anger, hurt, and fear. And even then, his headaches won't kill him. Cole feels them like a beacon walking through Skyhold, but it isn't worse than someone slowly dying in the Healer’s tent. 

People die here, longing, injured, in great pain. People have lost homes and loved ones and belongings. Many have had grievous, painful slights against them, unavenged or secret, like a hook in their hearts, being pulled on a line, ripping the muscle painfully.

Kaayras is not the only person in the castle. He’s not even the only person with hurts that are difficult, confusing.

It’s not the aching in the man’s heart that draws Cole close, even if it does draw him nearer at times late in the night, when most are asleep.

It’s not the intensity of pain itself that puts Kaayras’ hurts on Cole’s mind, nor is it the lack of urgency in his hurts. It’s the frequent proximity that makes Cole spend many hours, many days and nights, thinking and investigating them closely. 

Cole spends many long hours, confused in the presence of Kaayras’s aching hurts when they travel, so they are often on Cole’s mind. As they walk the long roads of Ferelden or Orlais, there is much thinking to do, and no getting away from the thoughts that circle through Kaayras’ head when they are walking together. 

No getting away for Cole, and certainly not for Kaayras.

Cole thinks about  _ everyone _ they travel with in the forward group; and that always includes the sluggish head of Kaayras, always the leader of their party.

They’re  _ all _ complicated hurts, The Inner Circle, but Cole understands the complexity and ache for each of them are to different degrees of pain, of loss, of hopelessness. 

He understands Blackwall very well, for example- guilt, growth, but haunted, hiding. 

But Cole doesn't understand Dorian- shame, solitude, furious and filthy. 

Dorian is a lot like Kaayras. They’re both hard to understand; an alienated filthy feeling, twisted guts and craving wrong. The wrong kind of flesh, a loss of all support and kindred, no one can  _ really _ be trusted.

But they are not the same. 

Dorian hisses with glittering rage and indignation, rallied against a view, against specific people with specific opinions, a violent disagreement with what gives him shame, but unsure what gives him more pain- family, betrayals, the insidious, the lies, the ruined relationships. Through it all, he maintains careful, calculated composure- behave just  _ wrong  _ enough to irk the people who’d oppose what he is, but not enough  _ bite _ to do himself any damage to  _ reputation _ or anything of  _ value _ . 

Kaayras is heavy like he is soden with lukewarm and stale water, damaged and given in, haunted by invisible enemies without faces, wishes to be different and to conform to what gives him shame, and knows that he himself is the cause of all his failings and pain. At times the invisible faces become one, a single one he can put a name to, and even then, he is crushed with his own sodden, damp weight in conformity, a submission, nothing left but panic to resist the inevitable; a panic he can  _ never _ control, and  _ that _ makes the panic all the more  _ terrifying _ .

Cole doesn't understand the cause for either feeling. He asks Dorian, once, where the shame comes from, and why he fights it so hard. Dorian is offended by the word  _ shame _ , so Cole tries to figure out the right word if shame is wrong, but cannot find one. Instead of asking Kaayras as well, risk the same interaction, Cole tried to ask someone else. 

Varric helped a little. Cole mentions  _ the wrong kind of flesh _ in a long tirade of confused questions; the dwarven man clicks his tongue in enlightenment, finally understands what Cole is asking him about after maybe an hour of fumbling words by the fireplace.

“Kid, not everyone is like you. Some people crave… touching.”

“I like touching, sometimes. Sometimes.”

“It’s not like a pat on the shoulder or a hug, kid.” It takes Varric a moment to try and figure out how best to example it to Cole without trying to give a grown man-spirit a ‘birds and the bees’ talk (Varric finds that demeaning to them both, somehow, Cole can tell, although he does not know what that specific expression ‘birds and bees’ means), and snaps his fingers instead. “You ever felt the way Tiny thinks? Ropes, and all that, he’s not subtle.”

“Yes.” Cole’s face pinches. “The Iron Bull-”

“Kid, don’t give me  _ any  _ details. Please. But do you get the kind of touching I mean from that?”

“...Yes.” Cole nods, thinking. “I’ve seen the pressing of flesh before. Savory sweating, sweet colluding in the silent dark… Locked in towers, there's little more to do.”

“I  _ did _ mean it when I said no details, Kid.”

“What does  _ that _ have to do with the shame?” Cole pushes, frowning and tipping his head up to Varric, fidgeting in his seat on the floor, facing the fire. 

He’s not a fool, he knows it has something to do with it, but  _ what _ ? Why  _ does  _ the shame swarm Kaayras after the idea of pressing in bed with someone sneaks into his mind, and he spends hours afterward beating the idea away and pretending he absolutely does  _ not  _ feel the thoughts and the tingling and the warmth in his face that most people feel when they think of similar things? Why does Dorian, too, swell just enough nerve and fear and distrust to pull back, when his words or his wandering thoughts of how other’s bodies could fit against his own seem to be mirrored back at him, reciprocated?

People think like this all the time. Cole blunders into it often enough: scolded by Blackwall for commenting on his wandering thoughts of Josephine and her beautiful looks and how she  _ might  _ look; hushed by The Iron Bull when Cole comments on the plans he’s making for later that night when the bedroom door closes with an eager partner.

Cole sees and acknowledges thoughts like these often, very often. Acknowledging them aloud makes people  _ react _ \- but that’s embarrassment, flustered faces and flushed skin, and a giddy sort of  _ oops _ in their mind. Or even an anger, but not the burning hot kind; the kind that is scolding and scowling and stems from the embarrassment of being caught.

No one’s even commented out loud about Kaayras or Dorian’s thoughts, and yet, they  _ react _ . With uncomfortable heat that does not feel so giddy, with  _ guilt,  _ and until Cole knows a better word for it,  _ shame _ . 

Why?

“Well. People have… Preferences, the  _ kind _ of people they want to be with that way. Some people don't want to at all, some people don't mind who or how, some people are… particular. In some places, and to some people, however, being with certain  _ kinds _ of people… is weird. Weird is a  _ gentle _ way to put it. Some people get angry.”

“Thats-”

“Silly, I know.” Varric holds up both his hands, chuckling. “But it's how it is. You mentioned the tower, and  _ sneaking around _ \- did you notice it was dangerous for them to do that in the tower? In some places, it's dangerous to do that with certain people, somewhat like that.”

That seems different. 

The Templars did not like the Mages colluding behind closed doors. Their minds and bodies raced at the thought, at secret meetings, and betrayals, of secret demon summonings and blood rituals and coups. They did not like when two mages disappeared behind the same closed door; they didn’t even like  _ one  _ mage out of sight behind a locked door. That’s why they took away the locks, and put them on the  _ outside _ of the doors instead.

Kaayras has  _ three _ locks on the inside of his bedroom door, Kaayras is not a mage. And even though Dorian  _ is  _ a mage, his door has a lock, too. Neither has templars to hide from, not here, not in Skyhold. It isn't the same at all. No one would come to knock their doors off their hinges, or declare them traitors to become tranquil, for colluding with people in their own beds. 

It doesn't have to do with  _ preference _ , either. And what does it matter, really? Although- no, Cole has to assent, a  _ preference _ did matter, in the spire.

Too many templars, too in charge, too cruel in their fear, had taken  _ preferences  _ for mages. Mages who did not mirror a preference for their wardens and guards. 

That was another reason the sliding of body against body was  _ hidden  _ in The Walls of the White Spire. Because it wasn't supposed to be happening- not there, not  _ anywhere,  _ not  _ ever- _ it was hurtful, coercive, offering no choices-  _ Do you remember telling me no? You can't do that now. The Tranquil don't say no to anything.  _ \- and a tranquil doesn't necessarily know then to feel, to feel hurt, but the others-  _ If you tell anyone, I'll say you used blood magic.  _ \- it  _ was _ hurtful. 

And that must be hidden. 

Because while the good templars there were quiet and too afraid to say a word, the higher ups could have them transferred for such cruelty.  _ Transferred _ , not punished.

Cole had solved many of those problems. Of any deaths brought in The White Spire by Cole’s own palms, they were not deaths even Cassandra could convince him needed repenting. 

Cole would never regret carving the throat of a Templar, drunk on power and alcohol, making the newest girl in the tower- unharrowed, unhallowed, so small, so afraid, tender and barely 13- weep in her own bed from unwanted touches. 

Cole had let her forget the man and the touches. Cole had let every templar in the tower forget the man had ever worked there. They’ll probably never find that body, sunk so deep in the cold, dark flooded rooms deep underground. It must be bones, now; Cole remembers the wet rats that once nipped his own hands in the dark. They would have picked the body clean in two nights.

In the silence as Varric had let Cole marinate on the thought, Cole comes back to the topic at hand. And, he understands, preferences  _ are  _ important. 

But once again, he doesn't understand. Because by all accounts that Cole knew how to measure- the hot-faced thoughts, the twisting bellies, the distracted gaze, the cheeky words, the memorizing of smells and shapes, the unnoticed shivers- Dorian and Kaayras both  _ experienced  _ these preferences. It wasn't a secret, dangerous thing, threatened in the dark of the night under threat of punishment- it was their own thoughts.

Besides- if they both craved, thirsted like blithely dehydrated, then why did it matter if it wasn't  _ perfect _ to a preference? If one returned from a desert, dry and out of drinking water- it’s  _ silly, _ to quote Varric, silly to be  _ ashamed  _ to drink water that is available to you, that you want, instead of something else. But yet, even more  _ silly, _ Cole reflected, to turn down a drink right in front of you to wait for the one you want later.

If the shame was reflectant sheerly on the fact that it was  _ weird  _ for Dorian and Kaayras to want to share beds with a specific kind of person, why not just  _ satisfy  _ it with who  _ wasn't _ weird? Even if it wasn't perfect to their preferences?

Cole couldn't grasp why any of it mattered.

“I prefer juice instead of water, but drink water.” Cole states, simply, breaking his contemplative silence. Nodding in assurance of his statement, he looks back at Varric from the fireplace again, expectant. 

Varic blinks, confused, then sighs when he gets the analogy.

“The problem with preference, kid, is that it’s not… not really a  _ choice _ . Your body doesn’t work if it’s the wrong kind of person. Or it all just feels bad. You don't like Ale, right?” Cole nods, so Varric continues, “so if you drink it, you can't help wanting to be sick. Right?”

Cole nods, slowly. That makes more sense, then, maybe. 

Cole didn't like Alcohol. It made him feel anxious in a way he rarely liked to acknowledge; an anxiety so far away it was quite literally from a different life. It was so far from Juice or Water, Cole could barely consider Alcohol a Drink at all.

Leaving a desert after running out of water, Cole  _ and  _ many people would likely turn down Alcohol. It made the analogy of  _ preference _ make a little bit more sense to Cole, at least.

And maybe, Cole thinks, that's another reason Dorian and Kaayras are so different. Why their shames and aches feels so different. 

Dorian refused to drink of ale until it tore his family away from him, and with nothing more to lose, wont pretend to be someone else ever again. 

Kaayras drank and drank and drank and drank of ale until he feels sick to think of even drinking  _ water _ now, and still his body craves the wrong thing, the wrong people, and he feels sick and sick and sick.

“So… the shame is from wanting water, and not the alcohol, but everyone  _ wants  _ you to drink alcohol.”

Varric nods, shrugging. “More or less.”

And the conversation helps Cole understand a little more. 

Dorian does not want to change, because he likes  _ water _ , and he understands a little better why Dorian's always angry; His father wanted to  _ make _ him drink the alcohol. Enough to hurt him to make him drink it. Dorian knew it would make him sick to have the wrong thing; miserable and more. Dorian doesn't want to,  _ cant _ , so Dorian  _ won’t _ . 

Cole understands a little bit better. He thinks he’d be angry, too, if someone tried to force him to do  _ anything  _ at the threat of destroying his mind. 

If someone threatened to turn him into a Demon, unless he drank alcohol, Cole would be very mad indeed.

Cole doesn't understand  _ Kaayras  _ super well, though. There's no particular people in his head that he is angry at for trying to make him drink the wrong thing. He's not  _ angry _ that people made him drink the wrong thing, even if he  _ had  _ names and faces to remember. He’s not really  _ angry _ about anything that  _ happened _ to him. Doesn't even seem to  _ regret _ it.

The shame is… different. 

Cole looks at Varric, expecting him to continue explaining, but Varric looks back at him and doesn't seem to have more to explain- or at the very least, doesn’t know what more Cole wants explained. 

“The root is similar, but it's not the same. There's shame in the body and in what it wants, sick for its own sake.” Cole says, slow, thinking, watching the fire again. “Sick and burning and-  _ failure _ . Pain so deep it grinds the guts.  _ I can do it _ , and he  _ did  _ do it, but it all came crashing after. There were special ways to  _ make  _ the body work when it didn't want to. So he did it all, everything he could, but it never went away, no matter how hard he tried to change, to train his body into it.  _ Cold, callus, crippling _ , but  _ willing _ .  _ No one’s fault but mine _ . Shame.”

There’s another stretch of silence.

“Yeah… alright, kid.” Varric sounds a little awkward, but his old song is mingled with concern and sympathetic notes. With a little straightening of his shoulders, Varric starts again, smoother. “Alright, kid,” he claps a hand on Cole’s shoulder, and Cole almost struggles out of it before relaxing under the warm, square palm, “This isn't really the kind of hurt you're equipped to help with, maybe just leave Heartless to his ways; it's not a place you can really help.”

“This is not a new kind of hurt, Varric.” Cole tilts his head up to look at the dwarven man from his hunched seat at the fireplace. He reacts as if Varric’d said such a thing of something as benign as a lost toy that needed to be found, and Varric does not seem to like that. Varric frowns, as though he doesn't like the sound of Cole’s familiarity with this kind of situation. 

Cole tries to explain.

“People hurt this way everywhere. It's just usually easier to help the angry ones. They just need to be given a knife, usually, or to be given a key to the lock. Kaayras doesn't like death or vengeance, though, and he… he's not  _ there _ anymore, Varric, I can't give him a key to an already broken lock. But he isn't better, it still hurts, so that leaves a knife, and, cutting, and killing. But Kaayras said killing for hurts is wrong. It's not  _ always _ wrong, sometimes it helps, helps it never happen again, helps you feel safe to exist in the world, that no one is coming for you or hunting for someone new to hurt like they hurt you. But it wouldn't help him this time, I don't think.”

Varric is a mixed bag of emotions and things he wants to say. He doesn't say most of it, Cole can tell that much. “No, I don't think it would.” Varric agrees, instead.

There's silence a while, and it never really becomes any less silent, so eventually, Cole disappears from the fire. Varric wants to be left alone, to think, anyway. 

Cole’s still not sure what to do with himself, but Varric helped him understand just a little. Mostly about Dorian, which is good. 

So instead of dwelling on the questions, Cole pulls back from Kaayras and decides he will spend that day thinking more about Dorian, more equipped, understanding better, more capable of helping.

And Dorian’s hurts  _ are _ louder and fresher than Kaayras- Dorian still deals with his father, his family. At least Kaayras is safe, now, away from the places where the tattered memories played, Safe in Skyhold, and not being hurt anymore. So Cole can focus on Dorian for now. 

Or, so Cole had thought.

Kaayras’ hurts aren't loud, but when he walks through the skyhold gates that same afternoon after Cole’s questions with Varric, Cole is drawn like a metal blade to a powerful magnetic spell. As if a knife yanked right out of his own hand amid a battle. Jarring, unregular, so  _ blatant  _ he could never have missed such a thing, no matter how quietly it whispered.

Josephine and Cassandra lead the way, looking and feeling uneased, and Dorian and Vivienne follow behind Kaayras, trailing, watchful, suspicious. 

Kaayras is like a walking hollow, deep inside; a yawning void that Cole cannot stop watching from the bannister, silent. Kaayras is always blindingly bright, green and vibrant, like the sun, but the ache he produces is  _ almost _ enough to eclipse it. Under the light of the mark that so easily hides away the rest of the quiet whispers, Kaayras is but a walking black hole, hollow, unfeeling, endlessly deep.

And then, cole peers into that hollow void.

Things that were grey and aged and weakened before- now swarming, colorful, and screeching like warning sirens. Small dangerous things, wallowing in the darkness unseen, clinging to every inch of all Kaayras’ limbs, as though they could suddenly become real and feast on his skin. 

If the veil were to become any thinner, Cole can picture the Despair Demons pouring through and leaving gaping rifts in their wake, encouraged by the writhing Terror and Fear Demons among them. The Mark is so bright it attracts demons through the veil as it was, but now the things that usually brush against Kaayras on the other side of the curtain are in a scramble, worked into a frenzy by feelings and memories.

Cole gets glimpses.

Hands- shaking hands- duty- to help- the scent of powder and perfume- soft skin- soft but feels so sharp- hyper awareness of every sound- slick and oily- distractions- hiding incompetence, dysfunction, with other skills- tongue and willingly stilled hands- _don't you dare tremble-_ hasn't done this in years- my wrists hurt- still any good?- doubt- desperation- moaning- she never takes the mask off- _my head hurts_ \- he feels like an object- struggled thoughts- mental images clipped and pasted- pretend- pretend desperately to be elsewhere- get half hard- lucky she never notices- _my head hurts so much_ \- her life depends on this- don't speak- don’t stutter- _don't say a word-_ whatever it takes- _my head_ **_hurts_** _it hurts it will_ ** _never_** _stop hurting_ \----

None of it is in the right order. It’s broken up and rearranged and pasted together again. A flurry of mixed, dirty feelings arranged in some catalogue order. All tied up together with a glaringly too perfect little bow, labeled a success. The only thing chronological is a small little thing, tacked on to the end of it, following the hollowness,  _ post victory- never gave up- _ head still pounding- down the dark road and the comforting sound of familiar voices- Cassandra- Viviviene-  _ Josephine her life is safe it was a victory- _ Dorian- _ and a crestfall _ . A joke. 

A splitting headache and he- he does not feel  _ safe _ .  _ Mocked _ , now, too; filthy, used,  _ mocked _ . A dirty  _ joke. I could die. I could die and I’d be just a dirty joke.  _

Josephine will live. And that's enough for him.  _ Josephine _ is safe. 

She  _ thanked him _ , after the crestfall, after the life fell out of him and shattered on the paved road. So he picked up a piece of it again, and he’s  _ ok _ . That's enough to keep him  _ alive _ . 

_ Josephine  _ feels safe. It's why he did it. Everyone is  _ safe _ . He will do  _ anything _ to keep them all  _ safe. _

He helped. He did a good job. His head hurts so, so much he can't think straight.

It was all remarkably dizzying and left Cole with a feeling of someone crushing the hilt of a sword into his chest, like trying to catch air into stunned lungs in the middle of a fight. 

Kaayras leaves such a heavy aura of shame Cole practically feels the grass underfoot of the massive man’s boots reach out and cry for him. The sun darkens behind passing clouds, sympathy for the dimmed light of a Herald’s hand. Little spirits across the veil stir; this place already had so many creatures of despair and fear and loss on the other side, and now they writhe for attention, pressing through the veil like a sheer, transparent curtain to rub like needy cats against Kaayras as if to mimick the ghosts of countless hands upon his skin, more frenzied with every step and every dark thought that seeps through Kaayras’ aching skull like rotted molasses. 

Cole catches his breath again when the Inquisitor disappears inside the castle, out of sight. But there is still a terrible, terrible dark void somewhere in those stone walls that  _ hurts _ .

It’s a terrible hurt, but not one Cole has never experienced. He even understands (just a little) the kind of hurt more than he did before. But Kaayras is usually so quiet, his hurts so  _ old _ , from years long before. And this is new, tainted, reeks of shame and defeat and loneliness. 

_ Loneliness _ of all things. 

Like hunger it is so  _ easy _ to fix and so dreadful to be.

Cole avoids the main castle for quite some time. A day at the least. He keeps to the top floor of the tavern, pacing and fidgeting. Considers who to ask for advice. Varric had helped him understand, some, but now he needed someone who could help him figure out what to do. Varric hadn’t known what to do.

Dorian? Cole knows Dorian feels a similar situation, a similar pain. 

Dorian didn't know how to fix this kind of shame either. Too warped by his own shame, his own thoughts, his own experiences, all so different from Kaayras. Kaayras was too different from Dorian- Kaayras wouldn't have made a joke about anyone’s  _ real  _ nights in bed. Kaayras can only joke about nights-in-bed that  _ haven't happened _ , because Kaayras is terrified of the ones that actually happen, of the actual press of skin. Dorian doesn't even know he hurt Kaayras with a Joke. Dorian doesn't understand, and he doesn’t even know how to stop  _ himself  _ from hurting.

The Iron Bull? Cole knows he knows Kaayras well,  _ too _ well, things Kaayras wanted to disappear forever. 

Cole saw that earlier, when he passed Bull on his scramble to hide upstairs in his own corner to process the sudden change. Down below, The Iron Bull feels a small creeping guilt, when he thinks about Kaayras. Cole feels it drift up from the ground floor every now and again. The Iron Bull thinks about it, about those hurts he’s discovered, and the guilt that has come from an imperfection of the Qunari Peoples, how they failed Kaayras, but doesn't know what to do himself, either. 

The Iron Bull had already come and gone from the Tavern once since the forward Party had returned to Skyhold; He’d come back into the bar mulling over yet more new information that he’d squeezed from Dorian. Cole knows from The Iron Bull’s thoughts that Kaayras has announced he will be working on his paperwork, and disappeared into his bedroom. Cole also knows, now, that Dorian is confused, thinks “Adaar Just Bit Off More Than He Ought To Chew.” The Iron Bull knows things, now, things he isn't supposed to. He thinks Dorian is right, in a way Dorian has no idea about. 

But just as The Iron Bull doesn’t know what to do with the Qun failing a Qunari that had dedicated everything to it for years, The Iron Bull also doesn't know what to do about a man who tossed himself neck deep into what The Iron Bull Calls, “His Oxe-Shit PTSD.”

The Iron Bull can't help Cole. 

Leliana? 

Cole doesn't approach her, often- wonders too much if she’ll remember him. Doesn't want to be disappointed if she doesn't. But she probably knows a lot, too. She knows  _ everyone _ , has seen everything, likely knows  _ exactly _ what happened that made Kaayras come home this way from a mission everyone had referred to as ‘a party invitation’. 

Cole must imagine it was  _ not _ a good party. He has seen glimpses of what happened, in those moments in the courtyard. It didn't  _ look  _ or  _ feel  _ like a party. Cole is glad he was not invited. He knows it was an important party, but he wishes Kaayras hadn't been invited either. 

The day passes. Cole is distracted and fidgety for hours as light fades away. Sera yells at him from below to stop pacing at least once. He tries to be good and stop pacing, but she yells an hour later to stop again and Cole realises he’d lapsed back into anxious pacing anyway.

Eventually, he cannot help himself. He cannot stay away from such a fresh hurt.

He’s back on the balcony even without a plan, still early in the night, only one of the moons out and still making its incline to the peak of the sky. She’s not the same moon he looked at last time he was here, and she’s the thinnest bit of crescent, since the last time he was here. Her whistle is quieter and gentle. Cole hasn't heard any pain leak from the mountains- he likes to hope the mother wolf moved on with her pups and found a home with plentiful food. 

The thought, now, is grounding enough for Cole to remember how to properly help people again.

Cole takes a moment to submerge himself in the cold and the whispers and the wind, crouched on the rail. Immensely aware of the yawning abyss before him, so much deeper than the crevasses littering the ice fields in the valley behind him. 

When the cold feels as though it has steeled the heat of the hurt echoing in his own skull from the surprise impact of first seeing Kaayras’ turmoil, Cole stands straighter on the rails, looks past the doorways, and dares not exhale too loudly less he disturb the creatures lurking in the hollow emptiness now waiting for him like a hungry beast. 

Kaayras is lying still as Cole watches him. He’s dazed and still so barely present, but awake. His door is locked and it is dark, save for the thin light of the moon and stars. The chilly air wafts in, but it makes bare skin cold.

It's so cold it hurts, but Kaayras can't will himself to stand and fix the cold, and lets his skin burn with ice instead, uncaring for it. As though it may deserve to burn with ice crystals. 

In the stillness of the room, and the hollow of lack of feelings in the void stretched in front of him, Cole expected the pace of Kaayras’ mind to be slow. In reality, as Cole begins to sink into the active aching consciousness, it speeds along in unrestrained, if chaotic and unwell. 

He’s thinking-  _ longing _ , actually. He’s  _ longing. _

Kaayras doesn't want to be touched, but yet, he does. His skin is cold and in the wake of things that  _ made  _ him feel so cold, his mind escapes to creative ways to warm it. 

In Cole’s experience of these kind of hurts, it isn't an uncommon reaction; flesh on flesh that makes one bleed and ache and retch and weep often leaves that aching hollowness, and there's only one way to fill it again, or so the line of thought goes.

Cole had seen that before in the spire, too. Itching pains and hurts that made people snake throughout the tower to conspire with their fellow mages in each other’s beds, skin bare of clothing and bared to desperate touching to fill bleeding voids. The more it happened,  _ the more it happened _ . A kind of chaotic dependency. Cole often did not understand.

Handsome thoughts of men. 

A man Cole can't name that feels like acid, feels like metal and trees and poisonous drugs. And other faces- many from within the castle. Cullen, The Iron Bull, Dorian, the handsome man who works in the library who Kaayras can't name because he’s only seen him twice. Various men, any man he could think of at the time, swirling in his head. All tainted with panic and guilt- and Cole realizes these are the images clipped and pasted together in his memory. 

These are the thoughts he used to  _ pretend,  _ pretend he wasn't with the woman in the mask, to pretend he was somewhere else, to get his body to work, because it  _ wouldn't work _ if all he thought of was  _ her  _ and  _ fear _ and  _ pain. _

Kaayras doesn't let himself think too much, usually, about such kinds of thoughts. 

When wanting thoughts come, he snuffs them out. Ignores the spikes in his blood pressure when he sees Dorian stretch for a spar or The Iron Bull make a joke of a sexual nature, or even ignore the distant giddy feeling when one of the handsome kitchen workers saves him a bit of breakfast if he gets there late, flustered like butterflies over something silly. 

The imaginings of if the handsome Commander Cullen had answered differently, the imagined feeling of lips marked with a scar, and the things Kaayras could have done behind a closed door to convince Cullen to give him a chance. 

The attentions of a man who purrs I love yous in a small cabin, miles into the woods, touched with fear and pain and chains pulling tight on cuffs around numbing limbs, but feeling loved, feeling warm anyway, desperate for those soft words when he can get them.

Kaayras doesn't let himself think such longing thoughts, but now they swarm because he had to make so many thoughts come to him rapidly in a moment of pretend. In the moment of panic he pasted together handsome faces and bodies and retreated to old memories of flesh. 

And now that he lays in the dark, he cannot stop thinking of them.

He's thinking about what he wants and can't have, and that hurts him too, almost as much as feeling what he _didn’t want_ had hurt him. But, it is better than pure hollowness, like earlier. This isn't hopelessness, defeat, _I could die and I’d be free._ This isn't _the world will never stop_ _hurting, everything hurts_. This isn’t _I could die and I would be just a dirty joke._

This is desire for a basic right. To feel less alone in a sea of people. To feel clean. To feel warm. To feel wanted and warm. To feel safe. To feel a touch that doesn't burn like hot iron splinters or skull fractures. To feel  _ touch _ . To feel anything. Anything but hurt and cold.

These are things… Cole can help easily. 

Loneliness, and Longing.  _ Hungers. _

Companionship. Compassion. Cole.

He can help.  _ Maybe _ .

Cole creeps in, slow, quiet. The fireplace is already made, cleaned while Kaayras had been away today by a servant, and stacked with wood and kindling by a soldier who’s been out axing all morning. Kaayras has never met this soldier- but Cole can absently tell by the kinds of faces flickering in Kaayras’ mind that the Inquisitor would find him very handsome indeed.

Cole takes the matches from the mantel, preparing himself for a moment with a slow, silent breath. Then, he lights a match.

A scraping match on the box, a scratch in a silent room, makes the bed shift suddenly and sharp. 

Cole does not move a muscle, even with a lit match in hand, flame creeping toward his fingers. 

He holds that same breath and watches the match dance closer to his fingertips, frozen. Tastes the alarm and panic in the air as it softens gradually, and the racing heartbeat behind him slowly stills again.

_ It’s Cole, _ he hears echoed, somewhere in the air,  _ it's only Cole _ , and Cole has to wonder if it’s just his  _ own _ thoughts that he’s trying to will to Kaayras’s head, or if they are echoes from Kaayras’ poorly working mind.

The bed shifts again behind his back, softer this time, less urgent. Kaayras’ tension relaxes, at last.

Cole exhales, almost blowing out his match, and crouches. Carefully, he coaxes a baby flame into the kindling, and continues coaxing it to grow.

As the flames start to liven, Cole raises and replaces the matches on the mantel. Then, he moves back to the balcony doors, and a gentle creak stretches across the still air as he closes them. Cole locks each door, three times, locking them with extra force to make the clicks echo in the quiet room, now backdropped with the soft sound of licking flames and cracking timber. 

The bed creaks again, gently, gently, gentle like the man on top of it, when Cole unlocks, then locks, the door to the stairs three times, one for each lock, as well. 

It had already been locked in the firstplace, but to hear it again after Cole’s sudden intrusion rests the aimless fear. The trickle of soured terror drips further out of the air, and as it empties, so does the void once again. A hidden, yawning trap of darkness that Kaayras is all too easy to fall into once he feels some semblance of safe again.

The fire casts the room in dancing shadows, and begins warming the air, now that the room is closed in safely. Safely. Feeling safe. Feeling empty again, but, safer. Cole repeats it, in his head, once again willing the thoughts toward the exhausted man.

The dagger Kaayras had initially jumped and grabbed is abandoned, next to the pillow his head lays limp on. Cole approaches the bed, moves it to the night stand, observing it’s slim blade and balanced handle and hilt. The one of the pair Kaayras uses that can be thrown. 

Kaayras made it himself, and as his gaze passes over the blade, Cole can tell from the faint banding in the metal that it’s Summerstone. Kaayras likes Summerstone; it looks prettier than it’s counterpart, Bloodstone, which is generally  _ better. _ Blackwall had chastised Kaayras for using a weaker metal, before starting a conversation with The Iron Bull about sword Material. Kaayras hadn’t offered his opinions, and had half way through their conversation restrained an almost affectionate smile from his purple-painted face; The Iron Bull had undercutted Blackwall’s preference for Bloodstone with Dawnstone. Because it was pretty.

Kaayras, three weeks later, had accented The Iron Bull’s new armor with Dawnstone.  _ Two  _ weeks later, though, Kaayras had made a sword pendant he had learned to make from leather with  _ the elven man, _ the one who feels like a friend, the one he hasn't seen in over a year, the one he misses deeply. 

The elven man taught him how to work leather, and of things the dalish and the dwarves and qunari and humans make with leather and other crafts. Pretty things like the leather band and pendant Kaayras had crafted, to be wrapped around the handle of a sword. A decoration, a good luck charm, with no reason but to be liked and loved and cherished. The one Kaayras had made for The Iron Bull had a Dawnstone pendant, tumbled and smooth. 

Kaayras had never given it to The Iron Bull. 

He almost had. 

But then once it was finished and Kaayras recognized it was time to give it to The Iron Bull, Kaayras had clenched it in his fist, tight in his large hand. And then, reeled his shoulder back far, and had thrown the pretty pendant and banding, over the cliff edge of Undercroft, cursing himself for the stupidity in his own mind. To make something sentimental, for a  _ Ben-Hassarath  _ that would eventually kill him, or drug him, and drag him back to the Qun when he was  _ done with him _ . 

The Iron Bull would keep it as a  _ fucking  _ momento to remember the Tal Vashoth he sentenced back to life endlessly pinned under others. 

That, or maybe throw it away. 

And yet, that hurt Kaayras to think, even more. He’d cursed himself louder in his mind for feeling worse about it being thrown away, a rage in riot, staring at where the gift had vanished into the blowing snow.

A long-lost gift no one would ever see.

Kaayras made little gifts like that a lot, for everyone. None of them, usually, made it to anyone they’d been crafted for. They were all torn up or thrown away, chastising himself for the ridiculous notions, the useless and stupid trinkets, the patheticness of it all. His Tama echoed in his head that Qunari do not have Possessions or Treasures, and his mother and father echoed that his ugly little toys were a waste of time and not to play with the leather and stones and wood. 

When the echoes started to taunt him for loving to make and give things to people, there wasn't any room left in his own head for Kaayras' own thoughts. His gifts were soon thrown away or destroyed, much like The Iron Bull's sword pendant, before the intended owner would ever see them.

Kaayras once made Cole a similar band of leather, corded with pieces of Quartz and Volcanic Aurum. He could see what it looked like in Kaayras’ mind; Could see the careful weaving patterns Kaayras’ twitching hands had made when weaving the leather, and see Kaayras carefully picking out the clearest pieces of quartz. He could see the inspiration; to make something Cole could wear on his wrist and fidget with rather than the sleeve Cole had torn on the mission, the moment when Kaayras had been inspired. 

Cole never got to actually  _ see  _ it. But he could see in Kaayras’ head, when the man had been coming to visit him in Cole’s normal place at the The Herald’s Rest with the bracelet in hand, but his sure steps had hesitated and then stopped before reaching the Tavern door. 

Kaayras had turned back away from the door and instead to the front gates of Skyhold, and dropped it off the drawbridge, the whole time picturing Cole’s disinterested face and assuming Cole would have given it away or lost it, or something else, just to not have to wear it. 

Cole had been hurt by the memory when he’d seen it flicker across Kaayras’ mind, when the older man had been watching him once again picking at the edge of his sleeves whilst they were making camp on the road. Terribly and Inexplicably hurt by the disinterested, uncaring face Kaayras pictured as he looked right at Cole in real-time.

When Cole had instantly met Kaayras’ eyes then, Cole felt the dread clap around Kaayras’ chest even when the Qunari’s expression did not change. Cole realized Kaayras had panicked in that moment, when the complex fear had overwhelmed them both; Cole had been struck with the urge to flinch, and under the impression that someone was about to hit him. Cole had indeed flinched, then, unable to differentiate that the sudden feeling of an incoming strike was not, in fact, his own instincts. 

They had been delivered to him straight from Kaayras’ panic.

Of course, no one was about to hit  _ either  _ of them. It was just a moment of panic.

Cole had been hurt by the memory and the image, thinking at the time that it would reflect that even someone as kind as Kaayras thought Cole cruel and disinterested. 

Cole later realized Kaayras expected that level of disinterest of  _ everyone,  _ not just Cole _. _

Cole realized the man in the cabin had  _ never  _ appreciated Kaayras’ gifts. Nor had his parents. Nor any Qunari. 

They had all been  _ very _ unappreciative. Kaayras' gifts were  _ wonderful _ .

Cole wished he’d been able to wear  _ his  _ gift. Or look at it. 

Sometimes, Kaayras still starts to make something with Cole in mind. But now, he never gets far into making them. He remembers Cole while trying to smooth stone or braid leather, seeing his own memories of the first gift he'd made and discarded, and when Cole had 'caught' him remembering it. 

Kaayras remembers Cole “catching” him differently, sometimes. Sometimes it tastes like guilt and he remembers Cole looking like a disappointed, sad child. Sometimes it’s a grinding halt of fear and Kaayras remembers it in a strange way, like Cole’s hands in tight fists, or a deep etched frown and the wrong colored eyes, or somehow Cole a  _ lot  _ bigger than he really is. Cole knows you can't always trust memories that feel that way, though; they’re distorted. Thats what happens, in moments of panic.

Whichever way Kaayras remembers Cole in that memory, Kaayras stops, because he realizes in one way or another Cole will see the gift he won't get and washes out his inspiration with guilt. 

Kaayras thinks the words  _ sorry, im sorry _ in his head on a loop as he quickly scraps the project- and Cole knows they’re apologies to  _ him _ , for when Cole happens upon these memories, too. 

Cole triest not to react to them at all, if Kaayras can see him. He tries not to inflict any more moments of Panic. He tries, very hard, not to hurt the people who’s hurts reach him. It’s hard, but Cole tries. 

At least Kaayras gives them the weapons and armor and upgrades. He can manage to pass those off. Essential, for the inquisition, not  _ gifts.  _ Not stupid, unwanted, impractical gifts that deserve sneers and will earn him some unnamed pain or punishment. 

Of course, they can tell. Everyone Kaayras makes weapons for can tell- they’re still  _ partly _ gifts. 

Armor with carefully inlaid Dawnstone for The Iron Bull, a carefully sharpened Bloodstone sword for Blackwall. Armor intricately carved with religious iconography for the Maker, carefully researched and inlaid by a  _ Qunari  _ and about as far from a chantry follower as possible, for Cassandra. Handworked stitching as perfect as possible with the best of cloths Kaayras can procure from Tevinter for Dorian, a touch of home. Painstaking upgrades and millimeter-precise replacement custom parts for Bianca, carefully carved or enameled or embossed and even more carefully tuned, just for the sake of making Varric smile.

Cole has felt them all react, to some degree. They can all tell the care Kaayras puts into their things. 

He even made Josephine- no need of weapons or armor or anything of the likes- a short, small dagger when he got his gloved hands on the right materials. Carefully made Ivory blade, smoothed and sharpened to a hairline point, and a silver handle intricately carved and detailed, with a round of gold ore in the hilt, painstakingly carved with her family’s crest. It was a true labor of love of a weapon- because Kaayras could never justify making  _ another _ weapon-gift for a woman who does not use them, and because such a blade would never need replacing the rest of their weapons and armors.

He’d  _ almost  _ thrown it away with all the gifts, because it was  _ too much a gift and inexcusable _ , but hadnt been able to, because he knew the ivory had come from an animal, and he could not throw that away. It was the Elvhen man, hissing in his ear in his memories not to waste animal parts, that convinced him.

Josephine never  _ used  _ the knife like any of them would. But she carried it on her hip in a clearly-disused holster, and a sheath she had custom-ordered for it to fit. And Cole knows that whenever she is among people on her own kinds of missions in orlais, it is never hidden by the silks of her gowns, and always displayed like a proper badge of authority. Jospehine has used it, more than once, as a simple letter opener in the face of a visiting dignitary. Carefully placed brags, for reasons cole would never understand. Cole just knew that it was  _ immensely valuable a craft _ (because Kaayras had feared that if it wasnt, Josephine would have thrown it away immediately), and she often displayed it as such. 

Josephine had not taken it off her hip since the Assination attempt, either. It had become valuable to her in  _ another  _ way, more then a prized gift or valuable materials and expert craft by Herald. It was the only  _ weapon _ she carried. But it would have been valuable if it was neither a weapon nor made from ivory, silver, and gold. She also valued it because it was a labor of love that had been made just with her in mind.

It was a treasure, for her. A beautiful gift.

Not like  _ this _ knife.

With all his skills, Kaayras’ own things are simple. This knife, if banded summerstone, was immensely simple and perfectly smooth if only to be painfully  _ deadly,  _ and the hilt balanced to be throwable. It’s designed to be exactly what Kaayras needs in a fight, no extra care, no carvings, no thought out hilts or grip. In fact, it's easily replaceable, and it’s not noticeable if it  _ were _ replaced. It’s not a gift, but it  _ is  _ perfectly made. Just like the ones he gives each of them; as perfect as Kaayras can manage. But this one could belong to  _ anyone,  _ and not look out of place. 

It’s just a knife. A perfect, killing-ready knife.

Cole knows Kaayras can throw it with deadly accuracy. Cole’s glad he had not made any sudden movements once the bed had shifted. 

And also that Kaayras had focused and  _ looked _ before throwing it,  _ looked _ long enough to recognize and remember Cole.

Before he does any more, Cole makes the same courtesy, and looks Kaayras over before making any other moves.

He frowns to see Kaayras has not changed since arriving at the castle- even Cole takes off his weapons when he goes to rest or, if he ever desired to, sleep. Or else he gets poked and prodded by his knives. Like his shoelaces, asking them to stop doesn't help, either. 

Cole moves to unbuckle the belt. A familiar motion; Cole’s disarmed Kaayras for his own sake before- but a gloved hand grabs Cole’s arm, tight, tight to bruise, surely, before Cole could even touch the belt of holsters.

A stillness follows, Cole’s hand falling limp as soon as it was grabbed. Still as he had been at the fireplace, as though Kaayras could just as easily send a knife flying like before, or even easier, shatter his wrist within his grip. 

The room swirls in Kaayras’ head a moment, spacily, impeccably lost, confused by the approaching hand he’s caught and the sparks of alarm that are already lit re-fanning into small flames of panic. The longer the room stays in stillness, Kaayras’ confused mind refuses to settle, spinning, uncertain, in looping circles.

Cole tugs, careful, on his now slack arm. Kaayras let's go just as easily as he’d grabbed. His hand hovers in the air, when Cole’s leaves his grip, tensing and untensing in a short burst in his usual twitch. After a moment of nothing happening, the gloved hand rests back down on the bed, and Kaayras squeezes his eyes shut as a fresh wave of headache pain comes and goes. 

“You should take your equipment off.” Cole goads, then, out loud as the tide of pain washes off. His own voice sounds strange in the intimate quiet of crackling flames and nearly silent, frightened breaths.

Kaayras grunts softly under his breath in response, confusion easing away but the dizzying race of thoughts and awareness still twirling. Kaayras sits up a bit, but then sinks back down without making any further attempt to actually remove any of said equipment.

He still  _ feels _ hollow, but not devoid. Not empty of everything. Hollower then before Cole had emptied the room, certainly; Kaayras will not allow himself to  _ think _ or  _ wander _ , now. Not with someone so close. Not with a person in the room. He’s more hollow than before, but he isn't  _ empty _ . Although, most of the thoughts in there now are confused, lost, or ache. 

Kaayras still feels like  _ cravings _ , even if he won't let his thoughts wander anymore. 

Skin hunger- flesh crying out for another. Cole’s confused by it- he would have thought Kaayras’ skin would still be crawling from recent memories. Cole never understands why the craving comes after this kind of pain, even though he knows it to be a normal reaction. Trying to fill that craving usually leads to only more hurt, contagious to others they use to fill craving voids. It's like a sickness. It’s  _ hard _ to  _ fix  _ like a sickness, but it just  _ feels _ like  _ starving _ . 

Cole hates the feeling. His skin starves, too, sometimes, and he never knows how to feed it. It isn't as bad as  _ real  _ hunger and starvation, but it’s close.

Nonetheless, Cole attempts to help again, and is not stopped from unclicking a belt buckle this time. “Lift…” Cole coaxes, like to a tired child falling asleep in their day-clothes, so he can pull the belt free without touching him. Kaayras raises his hips with a small arch, and Cole gets the tools- for picking locks, harvesting plants and parts from animals and creatures- freed from his waist. He takes the other dagger from it’s holster, moves down to remove Kaayras’ boots and the strapped blade there at his shin. Slowly disarms him of dangerous sharp items, with gentle coaxing and soft words.

The room is warm. Kaayras is safe. He doesn't need weapons, right now. Cole tries to will Kaayras these thoughts as he sets the sharp objects on the nightstand.

Then, Cole thinks for a moment, head tilted down, rim of his hat hiding his face. Thinks of how to proceed, while he runs his thumbs over the blanket on the bed.

Kaayras is already sort of drifting back to that place from before, again, expecting Cole to leave and already becoming less aware of Cole’s presence again. Expecting to be left to his own thoughts. Thoughts from before Cole came into the room. That dizzying place. Stillness. Thinking, craving, itching. His skin cries in ways that reach down deep into his bones. His fingers are flexing the slightest bit, rubbing against the leather gloves around them; for a stimulation that feels like skin, but does not hurt or cut like  _ real _ skin.

For a while there's no sound other than the flames, the shift of the blanket fabric between Cole’s fingers, the bearest sounds that almost can't be heard where leather gloves rinkle at joints.

Cole pulls himself up onto the bed easily, but slowly. Kaayras shifts at first, but more a shift in attention; a shift from just existing and lost, to conscious that Cole is here again. Not that he’d ever forgotten. Kaayras doesn't forget him, after all. Cole is a valued, treasured friend. It’s easing on the spirit’s mind at the best of times, and helps encourage him, now, to remember those words. To be remembered. To remember Kaayras’ promise to not forget.  _ A valued, treasured friend _ , Kaayras had told him. 

Pulled up onto the bed, Cole crawls forward, and Kaayras bristles only when Cole stops, situated, straddled on top his waist.

“Cole?” 

it's a rushed word. Kaayras stutters twice on the C, and it’s turse with a weak panic. Panic that's trapped with a heavy sort of acceptance wrapped around it, like a thick liquid that would stick and easily drown anything in it. He is tense, tense enough it must hurt, but his body weighed down by that heavy, sticky acceptance, so that his tense body does not move an inch. 

“I can help.” Cole says quick, soft. He mimics, sort of, the way Kaayras speaks to  _ him _ , actually. Gentle, speaking to someone more nervous, smaller than you, that sees only horns and the demonic cast of red hair and war paint. With tenderness to take away from a frightening fear. Not that Cole had ever thought so- he sees enough of the underskin, and  _ looking  _ doesn't matter when you want to help, and Kaayras  _ wants  _ to help, so looking big or dangerous or scary doesn't matter- but it's how Kaayras talks to Cole, because Cole is smaller than Kaayras, and Kaayras  _ never _ wants to scare anyone. Cole doesn't want to scare Kaayras, either; so he talks that same soft way, and even quieter and slower, says, “I want to help you.”

“Cole…?” Kaayras repeats, almost whispered, more confused, a little less accepting, a little more scared. Cole can't say it’s…  _ better _ , but he preferred not to hear such defeat, submission. So maybe fear is better? But there's a little less of that, too, to make room for the confusion, which Cole can appreciate  _ much _ more over fear. Confusion can be answered. 

“Wishing, wanting, wilting, unsated appetite for touch. Lusting for contact, warmth of unburning passion, no splinters, no shards, no razor sharp palms, strong and  _ right _ , even if it's wrong.” Cole carefully spreads a hand over the chest of Kaayras’ outer leathers; lightest of armor, but nowhere near as thin as the fabric of a mage’s robes or the pretty silks in Orlais. “It's not wrong to want touch.” Cole assures, gently, “It's not wrong if it only feels right from certain people.” he states, firmly, as if to dismiss the notions Varric had explained for as ridiculous as they were. That it could be  _ weird  _ or  _ silly _ to want specific things. Even if Cole did not understand the necessity of them.

“You crave to touch. But only if it's right.” Cole murmurs soft, gets briefly distracted, tracing fingers of one hand over the cloth, trying to see if he can feel the faint impressions of scars, of tone and muscle, of body and bone, of anxiety itself, below the fabric. 

He looks past the clothing for a few seconds, as hurts drag him in with fear. 

Sees flickers of old grey memories- 

Aching wrists held in itchy rope, how she’d wanted to do this; he didn't  _ know  _ how to do this, so he’s just agreed, gone with it, hoping helplessness would help, hoping he wouldn't need to figure out what to do if all that was needed of him was to lay still and be defenseless;

A feeling of filth for the first time, prepared for failure- knew he couldn't do this, but not prepared to be  _ made to _ , though he tells himself he should have been, this is what he was raised for, the demand of the Qun, of the people, this was his duty; he should have been prepared, should have known that when he  _ fucked it all up _ someone would have to  _ fix  _ his mistake; should have expected and known better; should have just been able to do it  _ right _ in the first place; 

A feeling that his brain was going to bleed through cracks in his skull; it only hurt more, hurt more, hurt more each time his head was slammed against a stone-carved marble headboard; to silence any sound or punish unwanted movement; 

_ she punched him once _ for pulling, afraid, on the binding ropes; it didn't hurt  _ nearly  _ as bad as her slamming his head into the stone; but he still felt tears prick his eyes; the tears got  _ worse _ when he couldnt breathe; furious fingers curled against his throat for daring the say a  _ word _ ;  _ dont say a word you idiot; dont talk to me; i won't be  _ **_disrespected_ ** _ like this by a first-breed; _

He started wishing, begging in his chest, that a piece of the marble would crack and come down with enough force to finally end the pain; the pain; the pain;

Until it was only a white blinding  _ pain _ , and he couldn't think past it, couldn't feel or see anything around him, and thought it would never stop; Sometimes, it feels like it never had; it had never stopped at all; it still hurts so fucking badly; when will it be over?

It never had stopped. It will always be this. Helpless, inside his own broken skull, needing to scream in pain and cant, it will  _ always be this, the pain will never stop, he will never stop hurting, he will  _ **_never_ ** _ be anywhere else than  _ **_this_ ** _ , _

“You’re safe.” Cole breathes out, shaking. Trembling from memories of pain that aren't his own. 

It derails the train of blindness and Cole feels himself jolt out of it just as abruptly. Only when he’s out of it does Cole realize how faded and messy and grey it had been. 

An old, old memory, but in the moment, sickening and gripping. Blinding, and Painful. 

“You need it to be safe, for it to be okay. And it is. It’s safe.” Cole promises, he’d swear on his life, he’d swear it on his existence, he’d rather be not real than hurt someone like that, let alone the man underneath him, someone gentle and someone who wants to help people, just like Cole. 

Cole’s hands run up to grip Kaayras’ shoulders, pull him from focusing on panicked memories by letting his own cold fingertips touch Kaayras’ neck. “You need to be safe. And you are. You need it to be safe.  _ It’s safe,  _ I promise.” 

Something shutters out of the massive man. Cole can feel Kaayras’ attention, pinned on him, and only him. Somewhere in the blinding commotion of memories, Cole lost his hat, he notices in surprise; it’s toppled over somewhere on the floor. He wonders if Kaayras had struggled, or if Cole had struggled himself, in the moments they were both blind with pain and fear and panic.

But it's okay. It’s safe, and they’re both here, not there. 

Cole’s fingers slide back down, retreating back on top of clothes instead of skin, slow but still tender despite the loss of directness. 

“I can help. Let me help you.” Cole murmurs quietly again. “I know what you need.”

Kaayras makes some sort of noise- it  _ borders _ on protest, but it's an inquiry. A question.

Cole repeats, slow, unclipping the buttons of top most layers in Kaayras’ mission clothes. “You need to feel safe.” he repeats it, but keeps going, because he understands what Kaayras needs to know, at least right now. To keep hearing it.  _ Safe _ . If Cole can repeat the word enough, it will help. Because it’s  _ safe _ .

“You need to be safe, and  _ feel _ safe.” Leathers unbuttoned and spread open, Cole touches over the cloth underneath; much, much thinner material. He can feel those little indentations, scars, dips of muscle, now, and feel a powerful, fast racing pound in Kaayras’ chest. 

“You need it to be a man.” He states simply, “And that's okay.” Cole tacks on the last, fast, when he literally feels Kaayras’ heart skip a beat underneath his palm, rubs his chest gently through the thin under clothes to try and soothe it. Because it  _ is _ okay for it to be said out loud, despite the sharp panic that shoots through the veins in Kaayras’ throat.

His throat is patterned and bruised with strange, winding threads of purple- not like the violet glow of his eyes. Deep, ugly purple like bruises, like something dangerous under his skin, always working. In a second, Cole thinks it might be  _ bruises _ , strange bruises, somehow scars from  _ her  _ crushing grip.

But then Cole knows, in a moment, that they are not. They are deep and disturbing and colored like the poison they are made by. They are veins in his blood, pulsing and swollen from overuse, from abuse. Cole is suddenly aware that the needle that had injected them was thrown off the balcony to hide the evidence. It was hours ago, hours ago it had been used and discarded. But the miscoloring that stretches down from his throat- over his chest, in his veins around each artery up his thighs and higher arms, are over a decade old. 

Cole’s fingers trace the coloring scars, evidence of a life threatening addiction, through his shirt. Cole knows exactly where the colored distortions are under neath it, because so does Kaayras. Kaayras stares at them every day. Four years ago, they were much worse. Four years ago, every part of his skin was threaded with ugly purple vessels and veins, and Kaayras could  _ see  _ every inch of his arteries running all the way to his fingers and toes. It is not nearly as bad. But it is there. Cole traces them, thinking. Glad he had delayed seeing Kaayras by a couple hours. He would not have been lucid, or capable of movement, not long ago. He would have been beyond terrified to see  _ anyone  _ while so vulnerable. Even if it was Cole. Even if it was a friend.

Cole is aware Kaayras moves, paying the Qunari man hyper focus, and feels the huge hands rest on Cole’s legs on either side of him. They’re slow and dazed, and gentle, but like he needs purchase on a slope he’s starting to slip down. Minds of their own, they just need something grounding to hold. They squeeze, just as soft as they’d grabbed, as Cole rubs circles with his palms, lifting the messy hand-made hem of Kaayras’ undershirt higher up. 

Kaayras holds his breath, head swimming again. Lifts and arches just a bit, helpful (obedient), so Cole can push it up easier. There's a wave of craving in each little hot breath Kaayras takes, panting like this needing and desperation is becoming a physical strain on his lungs.

“And you need to touch. You need the feeling.” Cole finishes, certain, pressing calloused fingers to rough, discolored skin. He feels Kayras jump and shiver at the bare touch. He makes a low noise Cole can't begin to name as his full hand presses with just enough comfortable pressure, touching in slow palming motions he can only hope are the right way. There’s a bruise under the edge of his ribs. It's old, a battle long fought. It's tender, and Cole avoids it, sensing the slightest ache from under the skin, trying to be as gentle as he possibly can. 

“Oh, stars.” Kaayras gasps, suddenly, under his breath, and Cole’s gaze jumps up to look at him through messy blond bangs from where he’d glanced to the bruise. There's something new, there, in that expression; a smile on unpainted lips, still faintly smeared with purple as if it’d been washed off in a rush. 

“You don't know what your doing.” Kaayras says, and it’s laced with… something that sounds like Kaayras’ smile. 

Cole stops, confused. There's silence for several seconds that could easily stretch into a minute.

Kaayras, genuinely, laughs; one hand leaves it's squeezing hold on Cole’s thigh, pressing against his own scarred face to hide it as he laughs with a growing warmth seeping into his tone and deep into his chest. Cole feels a surprising rush of heat in his own cheeks, and the tips of his ears start to burn. Dearly, he is confused. “I know what I'm doing.” Cole mumbled,  _ almost _ embarrassed. 

Kaayras raises his hand from his face enough to look back at Cole, prompting him to continue, so he… does. “Im… touching you.”

Kaayras, face still hot and covered by his hand once more, laughs again, softer. 

“Cole, I- fuck, you- no, you did, you really had me going there, Cole. That was-” Kaayras is hot and embarrassed and can barely string words together in the heat of the moment.

He's practically  _ giggling _ .

“...did I do something wrong? Or… weird?”

He’s  _ seen  _ touching like this  _ all  _ the time. He doesn't get it. This is always how it started, in the white spire. This is how it started everywhere else, too. if it was the good kind and not the kind of touching that hurt. He knows what he's doing, even if he’d never tried it. Did he do it wrong?

Kaayras squeezes his leg where the other hand still rests, “Perish the thought.” he mutters warmly. 

…he’s not sure he believes Kaayras. He feels remarkably self conscious, and unsure what to do, now. And even less sure which part he got wrong.

Kaayras reaches up with the hand he’d covered his face with, suddenly, pushing the hair falling in front of Cole’s face back. Cole’s icy gaze tilts down impulsively from Kaayras, to Kaayras’ chest. Even though they’re both Kaayras, this feels better than meeting his eyes- even when he isn't embarrassed, he prefers the curtain of hat and hair when looking someone in the face.

“…you asked Dorian, once, if you were handsome. Right?”

Cole nods- it shakes a few strands of hair loose into his face from where Kaayras holds it back on top of his head. “He said I'm ‘alright’.” Cole quirks a little of a smile, glad.

Kaayras chuckles. “On the contrary, you really are an eyeful. And a hell of a charmer.”

“I don't know magic.” Cole frowns. He’s not put any charms on anyone.

Kaayras leans up carefully, wincing and yet laughing, and presses a small kiss to Cole’s forehead as he eases Cole from straddling him to essentially sitting in his fairly spacious lap when Kaayras is finally sitting upright. Of the two hands still somewhat absently touching at Kaayras’ bared chest and midsection, one jumps up to rub his forehead where he’d been kissed, surprised.

“Thank you, Cole. For trying to help.” The amusement of the moment has begun to wane from Kaayras, Cole senses. 

Kaayras is not…  _ healed _ , or fixed. But he feels better. Has found a small bit of peace, somewhere in the last few moments. The craving in his body has had a taste of something it desires painfully, like it was starved of food, but it feels more at ease now. 

Better, Cole thinks. Not perfect. But better. 

“Of course,” Cole answers back, certain he’d do it again. He can tell that Kaayras is done and the moment has passed- mostly by the way Kaayras tried vehemently to crush the memory of Cole’s fingers leaving warm trails over his skin into the same mental box he does with every other heedy, craving though he ever has. 

Cole’s very certain they hadn't really done anything, yet, though. Not that he’s all that interested in the later stuff. But if that little bit was enough, that’s good. He’d do it again.

There’s a calm settling on the room. Cole is contentedly amused in the silence to somewhat observe Kaayras’ mind flipping through little segments and sensations of the moment and hiding them away. Dutifully erasing each part of the past experience that could be considered suggestive or sensual or sexual into neat boxes with other things that make him feel the burning need. Instead repaints it into something platonic and calming in his brain, revelling in the sudden sense of safety that gives him, content even more to still have Cole so very close- Closer than he normally allows people to be, Kaayras notes somewhere. 

Something hopeful peaks into his mind, Cole can tell almost immediately. 

“...do you care to stay the night? Sleep with me, that is.” Kaayras asks, soft, hesitant, and there's already something loud in his head. Angry, disgusted, already disappointed, turns himself down before Cole gets to answer. Upset that he asked something more, as though thinking Cole had done so much already.

It’s a twisted gut feeling which feels so close like the memory where Cole watched Kaayras drop his gift off the edge of Skyhold’s Drawbridge. Turning himself down before he gave Cole the chance to, to avoid the rejection.

But he still actually asked. Cole thinks that  _ must  _ mean something.  _ Better,  _ if not miraculously fixed.

Cole takes a moment to look over the head of the bead, just beyond Kaayras’ shoulders. The greyed, terrifying memories were not his own, and yet Cole himself is relieved that there is no headboard of carved marbled stone, not one at all, in fact. There was a wooden one, once, when the room was first given to Kaayras, but he had slept on the floor that night and not in the bed. The next morning, Kaayras had not been the least bit upset when the headboard was missing from his bedroom by the time he’d woken up, as well as the two posts at the foot of the bed (they had made marvelous firewood, Cole thought, when he had used them to burn down a patch of poisonous berries growing near the barn so that no one would eat them.)

The only thing in the place of a headboard was a comfort of no less than 8 various pillows; at least 4 of which Cole had stolen off the carts of merchants coming to sell to Skyhold over the time they’d lived in the castle and deposited there for Kaayras over time. 

Likely, more would accumulate. Even if Cassandra continued to scold Cole for stealing, he would probably take a couple more.

This room was safe. The soft cushions made Kaayras feel more safe, so it was essential to the room.

“Do you prefer it to sleeping alone, tonight?” Cole asks, unsure. 

Kaayras nods, slow. Uncertain; thinking to lie at first creeping into his mind, once more turn himself down and turn the request into a joke before rejection could hurt him, before the ghost of someone  _ else _ could hurt him for daring to ask. Thinking to lie, but he can't, because it’s  _ Cole _ . He can't lie, not to someone who can tell if he is. So he doesn’t, and just nods. 

Hopeful. He’s hopeful when he nods, if terrified of Cole’s reaction. Hopeful.

Cole nods back, then, appeased. “Okay.”

Cole wonders if he can get Krem to sew something soft to add to Kaayras’ collection tomorrow. Maybe then, Kaayras will actually give Krem the little carved pendant he was working on before the party happened, if Krem gives him a gift first.

  
  



End file.
